USB External Drive Not Detected After VM Recreation - Data Recovery Help Needed

G

gfavaro

Member
Sep 21, 2022
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The Problem

I accidentally deleted my OpenMediaVault VM in Proxmox, which was connected to an external USB hard drive that stored all my family photos. When the VM was removed, the attached volume was also deleted.
Now, when I create a new VM and reconnect the same external USB hard drive, the system shows the drive but only with a few MB of space used, as if it were a new/empty volume. None of my pictures are visible anymore.

Critical Detail
The external USB drive contains irreplaceable family photos. This is my only copy.

What I’ve Tried (using AI, I´m not a professional)
  • Re-creating the VM and attaching the USB drive again (same result: almost empty volume).
  • Checking Proxmox storage options to see if the volume was just unmounted instead of deleted.
  • Verifying if the disk appears at all in Proxmox hardware menus.
  • Plugging the USB drive directly into another machine (shows as connected, but no data visible).


Urgent Request​


It seems like deleting the OMV VM might have also deleted the partition table or volume metadata on the USB drive.

  • Has anyone experienced an external USB drive becoming unreadable or appearing as a “new volume” after deleting a VM in Proxmox/OMV?
  • Is it possible that the deletion affected the drive’s partitions?
  • What tools or approaches would you recommend to try data recovery (e.g., testdisk, photorec, or other)?
  • Any chance Proxmox has only unlinked the volume rather than wiping the actual disk?
 
Hello,

If this USB was attached to OpenMediaVault you can try to mount using the option 'mount the existing filesystem'.
Did you have a chance to check what on the USB drive you have?
 
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